Jamestown food pantries see 4,900 visits

Mar. 6—JAMESTOWN — Food pantries in Jamestown had 4,900 visits in 2023, according to Zoe Absey, community initiatives manager for Great Plains Food Bank.

Absey said the Great Plains Food Bank served 777 families through its mobile food pantry in Jamestown last year. She said the food insecurity rate is 7.8% in Stutsman County.

Across the state, the Great Plains Food Bank served about 156,500 individuals through its food pantries, meal sites and programs.

"That's 1 in 5 people in the state," Absey said. She said about 13 million pounds of food went through Great Plains Food Bank's warehouse in Fargo.

The Great Plains Food Bank held a meeting in Jamestown with 21 community members who represent different organizations and entities on Thursday, Feb. 29, to discuss food access, opportunities and barriers. The community members divided into groups and answered questions about food access in Jamestown and Stutsman County.

Barriers to food access include a lack of cooking skills and where to find resources to get food, community leaders said.

Some people have access to food but may not have the proper cooking skills, said Luella Morehouse, nutrition education assistant for the North Dakota State University Extension Service.

"We have moms, dads that don't know those skills," she said.

Some families have parents who work evening shifts, said Danielle Giesler, a counselor for the Jamestown Public School District. She said the parents aren't home to cook and their kids might have to cook meals.

"They should be able to do that. They might not have the skill sets so they are making pretty easy things," she said. "When we try to order things for our food pantries, we try to get kid-friendly things because we know that some kids are on their own for their evening meal."

Morehouse said some homeless people who are "couch surfing" might not have all the necessities to eat, such as a microwave.

"You might be willing to give them a package that can be heated in the microwave but they don't have a microwave to heat that food," she said.

Pamphlets and various brochures with information on how to get food are not all at one location, said Cassie DuBray, deputy director for the Great Plains Housing Authority.

"We as individual agencies have a good referral network," she said. "So us with the Housing Authority can say I know where you can go and get food. You can go into this place and this place and this place, but we don't have a really good whole picture online presence."

Olivia Schloegel, of Jamestown, said it can be overwhelming for a family to receive multiple brochures and have to read through them.

Giesler said a QR code would be good to have on websites where families can get connected to all the resources for food access.

Central Valley Health District Executive Director Kara Falk said her agency has a list of food resources and assistance programs in its Jamestown Area Health & Wellness Resource Guide. She said Central Valley Health is looking to update the guide.

One idea from the meeting was for the community to have a paid individual who can coordinate all the food resources in the community.

"We really need a paid person that can coordinate all the things that go on within this community because a lot of things that are going on within this community but they are kind of I would use the word silent," said Jerry Bergquist, a Stutsman County commissioner, chairman of the Salvation Army advisory board and member of the South Central Homeless Coalition. " ... It isn't that this community doesn't care because it does care, but we don't have a way to coordinate all the efforts to make it as responsible as possible."

Bergquist said there are eight homeless coalitions in the state but all work independent of each other. He said there is no unified voice so nothing happens at the state Legislature level.

"The same thing happens with the food drive — everyone's in their own area," he said. "I'm not saying the state can solve the problems."

Morehouse said the community members who attended the meeting need to hear from families who need the resources for food access.